


Irreparable Damage

by eerian_sadow



Series: Avalon [76]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Angst, F/M, Self-Loathing, bring all your tissues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-25
Updated: 2008-09-25
Packaged: 2018-09-22 20:41:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9624503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eerian_sadow/pseuds/eerian_sadow
Summary: She wanted him to be happy, but all she had to give him was a spark that was a damaged as his own.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this from Elita’s POV again. I felt like I could be more in-depth with her feelings that way. This is the fourth installment in the thread started in “Support Structures” and continued through “Solace” and “Honesty”.

Optimus Prime would be returning to the main branch of the Autobot army at the beginning of the next cycle. He would go back to his troops and put on his leader’s face and none of them—except for Ultra Magnus, perhaps—would ever know that he was so damaged inside.

They would never know how much of his sanity his resurrection had cost him.

He was the same mech she had always known, the same mech she had spark bonded with so many vorns ago. And yet, he was a complete stranger. And she knew he thought the same of her.

His deactivation had changed too many things between them.

They could never be who and what they were before his deactivation. They were still mates and they still loved each other, but she had been shattered by his loss and he had been broken by his return. They had bonded again the night he came to her base, but their union was flawed at the most basic level now.

He wanted to deactivate again and she had been in the process of healing and moving on. It was devastating truth for her to bear—for them to bear—but they had never been in the habit of keeping secrets from each other. She hurt now because Optimus hurt, not because he was gone.

She thanked Primus for the extra time they would have together, but she wished for something better for her mate.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

He had gone to find Jazz not long after their reunion. He had things he desperately needed to say to her second in command and she understood that need. She had let him go without a fight, only a warning that Jazz was fragile.

He came back looking more devastated than she could remember ever seeing her mate.

“Optimus, what happened?”

He collapsed to his knees at her feet and hid his face against her abdomen. “He hates me, Elita. Jazz was one of my oldest and dearest friends, and he hates me now as much as I hate myself.”

She didn’t have any words for him. She didn’t know how to comfort his self-loathing or to make him believe that he wasn’t at fault for the desperate actions that his troops had taken to resolve the Hate Plague. She didn’t think that anyone would have the words to make him believe that he should be alive when the bodies of so many of his friends—and Jazz’s mate—were allowed to be destroyed.

Instead of wasting words that would mean nothing to him, she wrapped her arms around his head and shoulders and held him closer. Hesitantly, Optimus returned her embrace, wrapping his arms around her waist and holding her tightly.

“If they brought me back, they could have saved Prowl,” he continued, anguish lacing his voice. “And Ratchet and the others. Why was I the only one? _Why?_ ”

She wanted to give him an answer. She wanted to give him an explanation. She would have settled for being able to make excuses for the people who had rescued his corpse and no one else’s. She wanted to do anything that would take the horrible sadness from his voice.

He had always been so strong and now he was reduced to a trembling wreck in her arms.  



End file.
